Just south of Bahia Manzanillo we found one fishingline in the surface with “no ends” (probably at least 5 miles). We motored parallel to it for about 10 minutes, still no end, but a turtle had got caught by the line and was really tangled up. We turned around and started the rescue misson! First we thought about jumping in and untie it but the line was really tight and around the head and front legs plenty of times. Luckily he was not too big so we managed to lift it on board. Karl Otto had just finished the Papillon roman with the french prison outbreaker from the 1930-40s, and in that book learned that a turtle can live for 3 weeks on land, upside down, so we used that trick. After untangeling and cutting the line several places we got the turtle free. We tied up the fishing line again so the fisherman will not notice anything.
This is a pretty bad way of fishing in our minds, and we have heard that about 50% of the catch is not wanted and will be thrown away (dead or alive). Having theese lines across shippinglanes as here will also make a lot of them break and when that happens they will keep on fishing for a long time..
Anyway – this turtle came back to the ocean again and swam very quickly away from the boat so we guess he is happy!
